We celebrate DownBeat’s 75th birthday with a special commemorative issue that highlights the artists, writers and photographers who have played starring roles in the rich history of the world’s greatest music magazine.
Benny Goodman
On the occasion of Goodman’s birthday centennial and DownBeat’s 75 anniversary, we look back at the symbiotic relationship forged between the magazine and the clarinetist starting in the 1930s. By John McDonough
A successful magazine brand doesn’t happen by itself. It needs help. DownBeat’s destiny might have been very different had its early trajectory not converged with an unknown clarinet player--Benny Goodman.
A magazine is a mirror that exists symbiotically with the objects it reflects. Each needs the other. It is a natural, often intuitive expression of its time, often a manifestation of a vague sensibility groping for identity. Great magazines find half-formed themes, gather and amplify them into a critical mass, and cycle them back into the culture with magnified impact. The New Yorker tapped into a revolt against provincialism in the ’20s and became the voice of cosmopolitan wit. Life Magazine’s photojournalism found its calling in World War II, and Rolling Stone made itself the crossroads of rock and youthful protest in the ’60s. Each intersected with its special moment with a unique precision.
DownBeat’s special moment came in a critical confluence between two themes that found each other in Goodman. The first was a new spirit of modernism in art and design inspired by new laws of motion and freedom. The second was a restive frustration in the ranks of a new generation of virtuosos, bored with the tedium of playing sweet music in bands led by singers and showmen who wore funny hats.
In the 18-month period between late 1934 and early 1936, a series of clean, ground-breaking new aerodynamic shapes appeared that would define the spirit of the 1930s: Raymond Loewy’s Hupmobile, the Chrysler Airflow, the Budd Zephyr, the DC-3, Flash Gordon’s rockets, the sleek shrouds of the 20th Century Limited that sliced through air like projectiles on rails and even the soft curves of Carole Lombard sheathed in a silhouette of silver satin. All were cultural expressions of motion, velocity and the leanness of streamlining. The legato flow of swing was a direct extension of that modernism into music, and Goodman, though no student of art or design, was its decisive agent.
The second theme flowed from the first. A brilliant virtuoso, Goodman had grown prosperous but restless playing mind-numbing drivel under a succession of bandleaders who viewed music as a business and whose principal instrument was the baton. It seemed unjust that great players should squander their skills supporting hacks and clowns. It was a hunting cry that had the convincing ring of reform in a reformist New Deal era.
Goodman became a personification of that frustration, and DownBeat became a principal editorial advocate and booster within the trade. When Goodman finally broke through, basically on his own terms--no funny hats, no snappy patter--his triumph became the musicians’ Magna Carta. And DownBeat could say, “We told you so.”
Soon, the best and the brightest would become the great brand names of swing: Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Benny Carter, Lionel Hampton, Coleman Hawkins, Gene Krupa, Harry James, Buddy Rich and Glenn Miller. Established greats such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Jimmie Lunceford would bask in newly honored glory. Justice and art, it turned out, fit hand in glove.
Features My Story: 3 Artists Explore Their DownBeat Archives
Sonny Rollins
Consistent Path By Ted Panken
Several hours into reminiscing on a half-century of DownBeat’s copious coverage of his career, Sonny Rollins paused. “I hope you understand that it’s emotionally jarring to go over your life,” he said.
That qualifier aside, Rollins treated the process with customary thoughtfulness and good humor, offering blunt self-assessments and keen observations on the changing scene described within the articles in question. His comportment brought to mind Joe Goldberg’s remark (“The Further Adventures of Sonny Rollins,” Aug. 26, 1965): “It is almost impossible to talk superficially to Rollins. He examines whatever is under discussion in much the way he examines a short phrase in one of his solos: over and over, inside out and upside down, until he has explored all possibilities.”
Rollins will observe his 79th birthday in September. Even in his Old Master years, a life stage when artists of parallel stature--filmmakers Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman come to mind--pare down to essences, he continues his efflorescent ways. Over the years, Rollins’ larger-than-life appearance and relentless style belied the notion that self-doubt could never impede his forward motion. But much of the DownBeat narrative describes a character around whom Bergman might have framed a film--a gifted artist less than fully confident that his abundant talent suffices to satisfy his aspirations, engaging in a continual process of introspection and self-criticism, and, furthermore, possessing the courage to act upon his convictions by removing himself from the public eye during three extended sabbaticals.
How consistently Rollins hewed to his path is clear from a comment that Nat Hentoff places at the end of his 1956 cover story, “Sonny Rollins,” which appeared a mere 11 months after Rollins, already dubbed “saxophone colossus” at 26, had left Chicago, his home during his first self-imposed hiatus. “I was thrown into records without the kind of background I should have had,” he told Hentoff, expressing a concern that his career was developing too fast. “I’m not satisfied with anything about my playing. I know what I want. I can hear it. But it will take time and study to do it.”
This theme would recur in different variations over the next quarter century, as would several others expressed in Dom Cerulli’s 1958 followup. By then Rollins had already investigated the possibilities of the pianoless tenor trio on Way Out West, Live At The Village Vanguard and The Freedom Suite, each an enduring classic. He explained this direction as a response to his difficulty in finding band personnel who could fulfill his vision. He also elaborated on the pros and cons of nightclub performance vis-à-vis the concert stage, expressing concern about “setting aside enough time to keep up to his horn” and his “hang-up” with “finding time to rehearse.”
Certainly, Rollins circa 2009 connected to concerns expressed a half-century ago. “Everything here seems like I could write it today,” he said.
Dave Brubeck
A Curious Relationship By Jason Koransky
"It was interesting to watch Dave get mad all over again,” Iola Brubeck said, referring to her husband’s rereading of the batch of DownBeat stories that had been sent to him.
Dave Brubeck expressed a similar sentiment when told that some of his DownBeat archives would be reprinted in this feature. He winced, then offered a contained laugh, which conveyed less a sense of humor and more a feeling of, “here we go again.”
“Early on, I had great reviews,” the pianist said while sitting in the music room of his Connecticut home, reminiscing about his DownBeat stories. “Then, the typical thing is the more known you get, the bigger target you become. The more polls you win, the more people come after you.”
Over the past 40-plus years, Brubeck has been more or less heralded as a jazz pioneer in these pages. For example, Michael Bourne’s September 2003 cover story, “Classic Time,” deemed him “one of the most popular and honored jazz musicians” of all time, and called his visage more akin to an emperor than a jazz artist. Today, he’s unquestionably considered a master of the music. Time has the ability to change perceptions.
Not long after Brubeck first appeared in DownBeat in 1947, he started his meteoric rise to fame. The magazine covered him extensively--and he wrote two features for the magazine--yet this coverage reflected the polarizing effect that Brubeck had on the jazz world. Some people loved him, while others called him an overhyped artist who did not play “real” jazz.
Take the magazine’s infamous review of Time Out, written by Ira Gitler. One of the most popular and influential jazz albums of all time could only muster 2 stars in the magazine.
“In classical music, there is a kind of pretentious pap, sometimes called ‘semi-classical,’ which serves as the real thing for some people,” reads the April 28, 1960, review. “As a parallel, Brubeck is a ‘semi-jazz’ player. There is ‘pop jazz’ with no pretensions like that purveyed by George Shearing--and everyone accepts it for what it is. Brubeck, on the other hand, has been palmed off as a serious jazzman for too long. ... If Brubeck wants to experiment with time, let him not insult his audience with such crashing-bore devices.”
“The review wasn’t all negative,” Gitler recently said.
Brubeck can laugh off Gitler’s review today. “Ira eventually came around,” Brubeck said. “The critics who put me down the most came and asked me to forgive them.”
Perhaps Gitler didn’t ask Brubeck for forgiveness. But a peace has been made. And most have come to respect Brubeck and his music. At 88 years old, Brubeck is a proud man, someone who believes strongly in his music. He still has a confidence that encroaches on but does not become cockiness. And he deserves it. After all, reading through these DownBeat archives shows just a glimpse of the battles he fought in order to make the music in which he so strongly believes.
Marian McPartland
From Her Piano To Her Pen By Paul de Barros
Many musicians have written for DownBeat over the years, but few, if any, have experienced the kind of immediate impact Marian McPartland did in the spring of 1971.
Long before McPartland was thrust into the limelight by her National Public Radio show, “Piano Jazz,” she contributed a “Woodshed” column about her new composition “Ambiance.” A gorgeous modal ballad inspired by Herbie Hancock (and recorded first on McPartland’s 1970 album on Halcyon of the same name), McPartland’s transcription of “Ambiance” so inspired DownBeat reader Jerry Dodgion, alto saxophonist for the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, he wrote a big-band arrangement of the tune.
“He didn’t say a word to me,” McPartland recently recalled in an interview at her Long Island home. “He went ahead and made the arrangement, then he called me up and said, ‘We just recorded your tune.’ I was floored.”
The tune appeared on the now-rare 1974 LP Potpourri, on Philadelphia-based International Records.
That’s just one example of the many ways in which DownBeat and McPartland have intersected over the years. Since her first appearance in these pages in 1949, the pianist, composer, educator, radio personality and author has written dozens of reviews, profiles and features for the magazine, as well as being the subject of two cover stories, two “Blindfold Tests” and dozens of reviews and features.
“I’ve always taken DownBeat and I’ve always read it,” said the 91-year-old pianist. “It has well-written articles, record reviews, great ads. I’ve tried to keep up with who’s doing what and now, of course, I’m looking for people for ‘Piano Jazz.’”
Today, McPartland is one of the most recognizable names in jazz, broadcasting in more than 240 markets around the country. The winner of a Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcasting, she has recorded more than 50 albums, performed for the Supreme Court and two presidents in the White House and in 2004 was presented a Grammy Trustees Award for her contributions to education.
Riffs From early interviews with Roy Haynes, Mary Lou Williams and Clifford Brown, to Norah Jones’ Student Music Award win and Roy Hargrove’s “Auditions” profile, we revisit the first DownBeat articles on many of the music’s legends and current stars.
Classic Chords & Discords DownBeat readers have never shied away from expressing their thoughts about the music and the magazine. We include some of the most compelling letters from the past 75 years.
On Newsstands Now
The September 2010 issue of DownBeat highlights bassist and vocalist Esperanza Spalding, who continues her upward trajectory with a modern chamber music project that combines the spontaneity of improvisation with sophisticated string trio arrangements. Other artists featured in this issue include pianists Danilo Pérez and Billy Childs and guitarist Al Di Meola.
